Union Station — iStock/4kodiac(LOS ANGELES) — An already overbooked COVID-19 testing site at Los Angeles’ Union Station was briefly shuttered Monday to make way for a film shoot amid a spike in cases there — and after that sparked outrage, nobody seems to know how it happened.
After news broke that the testing would be halted for the She’s All That remake shoot, in turn canceling over 500 scheduled appointments, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti took to Twitter to do damage control.
“Working with @LAFD, @Curative & @MetroLosAngeles, my team has worked to reopen testing at Union Station on Tuesday,” Garcetti tweeted. “The 504 Angelenos who were scheduled for a test there can visit the kiosk as originally planned or any of the other 14 City sites, where we offer 38K tests daily.”
So how’d it happen? For its part, a representative for FilmLA, which handles film permitting for the city, claimed to ABC News, “Prior to this issue being brought to our attention, neither FilmLA nor the locations team for the production company had prior knowledge of a COVID-19 testing center operating on-site.”
The rep also noted that their office didn’t know who decided to shut testing down, but “production reps for the film offered to work with station representatives to restore access to the testing site [Tuesday].”
The news that the site had been shut down drew outrage both from residents and the local press, with most placing the blame on Garcetti’s shoulders. The activist group the People’s City Council posted a round-up of negative headlines, calling the situation an “embarrassment” and the mayor unfit to serve in office.
The remake, titled He’s All That, will be a gender-swapped version of the 1999 movie, about a nerdy high school girl who transforms into a hottie, mostly by removing her glasses.
By Stephen Iervolino
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